Many beverages containers, such as coffee carafes and travel mugs, have a lid that attaches to the container body to prevent spilling of the beverage during transport. The lid of one type of such beverage container attaches by mating threads on the lid to complementary threads in the neck of the container and screwing the lid into or onto the container. A gasket, or some other similar seal, is typically disposed between an interior beverage-holding portion of the container and the lid to prevent the beverage contained therein from leaking out of the container while the lid is engaged in a closed position.
To dispense the beverage from this type of container, the lid of the container may be partially unscrewed to either unseat or relocate the position of the gasket or seal within the container and permit the beverage to flow out of the container through an opening while still retaining the lid on the container. This configuration permits the user to either sip or pour the beverage from the container without entirely removing the lid from the container. However, a downside of this type of container is that the user may inadvertently unscrew the lid further than is necessary to merely dispense a beverage, thereby resulting in the lid coming loose from the container. More specifically, when unscrewing the lid to move the lid from the sealed position to a position that will permit fluid flow through the lid while the lid is still partially engaged with the container, the user may inadvertently unscrew the lid so that the threads of the lid are no longer engaged with the threads of the container. When this occurs, the lid may fall off of the top of the container when the user tries to sip or pour the beverage and possibly spill the beverage.
Some containers have attempted to address this problem by including a small protrusion on one of the threads of the lid that is supposed to cause a small interference fit with a similar protrusion on the complementary threads of the container body. However, this solution has some drawbacks. First, this interference fit is often times not very pronounced and can be easily overcome by the user without the user even noticing they have unscrewed the cap past the engagement of the interference fit, which may result in the user unscrewing the lid too far. Second, the protrusion on the threads can wear down over time and be less effective at indicating to the user that the lid is in the open position. Both of these drawbacks can also lead to a user inadvertently unscrewing the lid past the interference point so that the lid falls off during use.
Accordingly, there is a need for a beverage container system configured to permit locking a lid onto a container in an open condition in which the contents of the container may be dispensed and, accordingly, prevent the lid from being inadvertently disengaged completely from the container.